WND EXCLUSIVE

Feinstein bill targets parents for owning guns

Bill punishes Mom and Dad if juvenile gets hands on 'assault' weapon

Drew Zahn covers movies for WND as a contributing writer. A former pastor, he is the editor of seven books, including Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching, which sparked his ongoing love affair with film and his weekly WND column, "Popcorn and a (world)view." Drew currently serves as communications director for The Family Leader.

Once semiautomatic “assault” weapons are banned, according to the controversial bill reportedly being offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., if a juvenile gets his hands on one, his parents could be held responsible.

Writer David Codrea has published a copy of what he says is the proposed bill, S.150, before it has been formally posted on the Library of Congress THOMAS database.

Not only does the proposed legislation outlaw the sale or manufacture of semiautomatic weapons with certain features, reclassifying them as “assault” weapons, it also restricts how such firearms already in existence – or “grandfathered in” – are stored.

Specifically, the bill makes it unlawful for a gun owner to store the weapon in a place he or she “has a reasonable cause to believe” a child – or a host of other prohibited individuals – might be able to access it.

A gun owner who has one of these weapons had best heed the bill’s provision that it be “locked in a secure gun storage or safety device that [a prohibited individual] has no ability to access.”

Feinstein’s bill, therefore, would not only render the weapons nearly useless for home protection, but also open the door to prosecution of the owner if his or her weapon fell into the wrong hands.

Feinstein claims she wants banned “sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing of 120 specifically named firearms, certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one or more military characteristics; and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.”

Her bill, however, also includes a few secondary issues, such as authorizing the U.S. attorney general to release grant money to states for weapon buy-back programs and the restrictions on firearm storage.

Page 20 of the bill contains the storage language, which would render it “unlawful, for any person, other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer, to store or keep under the dominion or control of that person any grandfathered semiautomatic assault weapon that the person knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, will be accessible to an individual prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under subsection (g), (n), or (x).”

Those subsections on “prohibited people” include:

Anyone convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for longer than one year

Fugitives from justice

Anyone addicted to controlled substances

Anyone who has been adjudicated as mentally “defective” or has been committed to a mental institution

Illegal aliens

Anyone who has been given a dishonorable discharge from the military

Anyone who has renounced their U.S. citizenship

Stalkers

Anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence

Any person who is under indictment for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year

The report said a $200 tax is imposed each time a National Firearms Act weapon is registered or transferred.

“Presumably, each weapon registered as an NFA firearm would be subject to the same restrictions,” the report said.

For support, Feinstein cites a letter to the editor on the American Journal of Public Health in which two people wrote that “when Maryland imposed a more stringent ban on assault pistols and high-capacity magazines in 1994, it led to a 55 percent drop in assault pistols recovered by the Baltimore Police Department.”

However, Feinstein’s inconsistency on gun control was captured on video:

At a U.S. Senate hearing on terrorism after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, she told “a little anecdote” of how she carried concealed to protect herself after two assassination attempts by the New World Liberation Front, the NWLF.

She explained: “I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me.”

Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, asked in an interview with WND, “Do we need any more proof that she is a hypocrite?”

She championed her private firearm ownership the same year she called for banning “all” firearm ownership.

In an interview with “60 Minutes” in 1995 she said, “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up every one of them. Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ’em all in, I would have done it.”